Mission & Vision

Mission Statement

The mission of RCA is to cultivate a spirit of inquiry into the truth, goodness, and beauty of God and His creation, so that we engage the world with wisdom and eloquence for Christ.

Contained within our mission statement are four ideas:

...Cultivate a spirit of inquiry...

We want students to possess the tools and the desire to continue learning long after they graduate from Rochester Classical Academy. We believe that children are given the gift of curiosity by their Creator and that too often the desire to unravel the thread of an idea is lost during the school years. We cannot teach them everything they will need to know for life, but we can give them the tools to take on any body of knowledge they encounter both in school and out. If we achieve our goal of graduating lifelong learners, our students will be able to pursue any path they take and adapt to an ever-changing world.

…Into the truth, goodness, and beauty of God and His creation...

We believe that God is true, good, and beautiful, and that we encounter truth, goodness, and beauty when we study Him and His creation. When we do our own creating, we ought to do so with the elements of truth, goodness, and beauty in our hearts and minds, so that we align ourselves with the Lord and the purpose for which we were created. We also believe we can encounter these attributes in the works of non-Christians so long as we appreciate them through the lens of a biblical worldview.

…With wisdom and eloquence...

We seek to send students out into the world with wisdom because knowledge divorced from truth is a recipe for disaster. We also want our students to have the tools and the desire to engage others with winsome, beautiful, and compelling communication, so that they can speak the wisdom they possess into the world around them.

…We can engage the world for Christ.

Christ engages the world through His followers who work to spread the gospel and seek the renewal of everything sin has corrupted. Educating children at RCA is a way for us to love the Lord and others by raising up students whose lives point back to Christ and who seek to infuse our culture with justice, mercy, humility, and decency. Our statement refers to ‘we’ rather than ‘our students’ because we believe the mission will affect not just the students, but also our teachers, our administrators, our parents, and our community of partners.

Vision Statement

Our School

Rochester Classical Academy will be a place that integrates academic rigor and intentional Christian discipleship, with each enhancing and not compromising the other. Using an instruction model and curriculum derived from 2000 years of the richest and best in education, RCA will be a place where the best things that have been created, calculated, and discovered are studied.

RCA will be a place where students flourish across disciplines, where the painter is also a scientist, where the star forward also has a passion for poetry, where the math wiz loves to sing in choir.

RCA will be a place where the performing, visual, and literary arts are not regarded as optional, but will be seen as an essential reflection of God’s creative energy in the world, and that the practice of creating and reflecting beauty will be joined with truth and goodness so that each reinforces the other.

RCA will be a place that is neither relativist nor sheltering, where the non-Christian thinkers who have influenced our culture are encountered by students at an appropriate age, and they will be guided through the writings by teachers of sound mind and solid Christian faith. By taking this approach, our goal is to train our students for engagement with a world that is increasingly hostile to the claims of historical Christianity, but which also desperately needs Jesus.

RCA will be a place where education is viewed in its proper place, as a tool to bring about human flourishing for the purpose of glorifying God and serving others, and not as the solution to the world’s problems. RCA will be a community of Christian disciples, learning to live together while pursuing rigorous scholarship and development of their Christian minds.

Our Students

Our vision is that graduates of Rochester Classical Academy will listen attentively, think clearly, and always seek understanding; reason critically and practice discernment; articulate respectfully, precisely, and winsomely in both spoken and written communication; and practice all of these qualities through a coherent biblical worldview.

We desire that our students understand that God is true, good, and beautiful, and that He is the author of all truth, goodness, and beauty; that they acknowledge that the work of Christians is to be modeled on these attributes of God as we create, restore, and renew with truth, goodness, and beauty; that they understand and master the fundamentals of the seven liberal arts, and that they have the tools to execute and the desire to engage in lifelong learning.

We aim for students to seek to serve their families, their communities, and the world with the resources God has given them to steward; who demonstrate discipline, honor, and integrity; who are socially graceful and spiritually gracious; who respect proper authority, yet be equipped and willing to lead; and who passionately seek to be the best in all realms of endeavor, not for their own sake, but for the advancement of the Kingdom.

We seek to raise up students who recognize cultural influences as distinct from biblical mandates for virtuous living, who seek to engage with culture for the sake of redeeming it, who seek to understand God’s plan of redemption as it applies to history and current events, and who evaluate the whole of their personal experiences in light of the Scriptures and joyfully submit their lives to God.

Finally, we yearn for our students to know and love Jesus and His church; to understand that all need to hear, believe, and trust the gospel, including themselves; to love those who are unsaved, possess the courage to share the gospel, be equipped to defend their faith against those who seek to tear them down, and be filled with humility and gratitude to God.

Our Faculty

At Rochester Classical Academy, we aim to cultivate these same qualities in our faculty. We want gifted teachers who love their students and whose love of their subjects energizes and inspires those they teach. We want teachers who love the Lord and walk humbly with him in a way that is easily and regularly perceived by the students, especially in addressing their own sin. We want our teachers to understand the distinctive features of classical Christian education, seek to implement them in their teaching, and discern how the work they do in their classrooms fits into the kind of education practiced by RCA. We seek faculty to serve as academic mentors, helping students identify the intellectual, artistic, physical, and spiritual gifts God has given them, and determine ways they might develop these gifts in service of building the Kingdom. We want teachers who pursue learning and growth over the whole of their lives as part of the purpose for which God created them, to glorify him in all things. We want our faculty to grow in relationship with Christ, to participate actively and joyfully in local churches, and to grow in knowledge and love of the Scriptures. Recognizing that the above qualities are not found in all teachers, we aim to pay our faculty well so that they make a career at RCA.

Our Parents

At Rochester Classical Academy, we operate under the principle of in loco parentis, meaning that we view ourselves as functioning under the delegated authority of our students’ parents. We believe that parents are primarily responsible for the education of their children and that our place is to partner with parents in raising up children to know the Lord and steward the gifts of heart, soul, mind, and strength that He has given them.

We aim to cultivate in our parents a sense of responsibility for RCA, and to see them come to know and appreciate our philosophy of education and the classical methodologies derived from that philosophy. We want our parents to grow with our school and to be engaged with and animated by the educational development of their children. While we maintain authority in the realms of curriculum, policy, and discipline, we seek to affirm rather than undermine the God-given authority parents have over their children.

Our City

By helping to build up the next generation through our work at the RCA, we hope to bless the Rochester area. We seek to demonstrate love in all our dealings with individuals, organizations, businesses, and other schools. We aim to build caring and joyful relationships with members of our community, reflecting the love that Christ has shown us. We seek to be in great fellowship with a wide variety of churches throughout the Rochester area. We seek to communicate our vision for classical Christian education and to encourage Christian parents to grasp, appreciate, and pursue this centuries-tested education for their children.